


Jedi Mittens

by betts



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abandonment, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, Kid Rey, Knitting, Leia & Han's A+ Parenting, No Incest, Reluctant Caretaker Ben Solo, TOO GOOD, This fic is a Cinnamon Roll, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, blood mention, too pure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 11:55:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6078411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey keeps track of how many days Uncle Luke is absent on a slate rock Ben chiseled for her years ago, just so she would stop crying about his trips. “Here,” Ben had said, shoving the slate and some chalk in her impossibly tiny hands, “mark how many days he’s gone so it doesn’t seem so long.” </p><p>He realized if he did that for his own parents, he’d need a much bigger piece of slate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jedi Mittens

**Author's Note:**

> Inspo for fic: Ewan McGregor saying that his lightsaber kept burning his hand, and the background info on Kylo Ren's shitty hipster lightsaber.
> 
> This fic is so pure, I was tempted to make a sock account for it. I'll resume my regularly programmed sin shortly.
> 
> Unbeta'd. My apologies for any errors.

The Skywalkers live on an island in the middle of nowhere.

Should there ever be a real emergency, Ben would not only _not_ know how to guide anyone to their location, he wouldn’t know who to call in the first place. This thought doesn’t scare him as much as bum him out that he might die on this godforsaken trash heap, having never attained the regal status owed to him by the genetic legacy flowing through his veins.

The worst part about island life is living with his baby cousin Rey, who, at nine years old, seems beyond content in her strict daily routine: wake up at dawn, do her meditations, practice her katas, eat breakfast, and prepare to spend the daylight hours with Uncle Luke’s droid exploring the island and marking it on a worn map she’s been drawing for years. When she comes home, Ben (begrudgingly) makes her dinner, and they eat in silence--her happily taking apart whatever broken mechanical bits her father left for her, and him watching holovids and brooding.

Rey keeps track of how many days Uncle Luke is absent on a slate rock Ben chiseled for her years ago, just so she would stop crying about his trips. “Here,” he had said, shoving the slate and some chalk in her impossibly tiny hands, “mark how many days he’s gone so it doesn’t seem so long.”

He realized if he did that for his own parents, he’d need a much bigger piece of slate.

A sharp gasp breaks Ben of his reverie, spaced out in his bunk scrolling through newsfeeds on his datapad. He sighs and looks over at little Rey, perched cross-legged on the floor beside a quiet Artoo, pieces of mechanical trash scattered around her. The night is warm and dark, a slight breeze coming through the open windows of their wood-paneled dumpster of a trailer.

Rey is gripping her arm, a trail of blood rolling down her wrist. She stares at it for a long moment before her chin trembles and big tear drops well in her eyes.

She looks over at Ben, lying a few feet away, and asks with an annoying amount of childlike desperation, “Benny?”

He told her years ago not to speak to him unless it was an emergency, because he wasn’t her caretaker and her affairs were none of his business. That said, he _is_ significantly older than her, and while he might be labeled a bad kid sometimes, he’s not a monster.

“You’re a big girl. You’re fine,” Ben says, training his attention back to his datapad.

Rey lets out a broken sob, not one borne of physical pain, but of the intense realization of utter aloneness. Abandonment. When you get hurt, there’s no one there to help, no one who gives enough of a shit about you to bandage your wounds. _You’re on your own, kid_ , Han used to say to Ben whenever he’d have questions about the universe and the Force and life in general. At first, Han’s perpetual dismissal was hurtful and infuriating, then Ben realized it was because his father was totally useless--Force insensitive, mostly unintelligent, a petty criminal whose sole achievement was handed to him in pity by his ex-wife.

Normally Rey pushes the loneliness aside, being as future-minded as she is, but Ben has never been able to do that. He dreams only of a distant past he’s never lived, yearning for the glory of fighting alongside his grandfather.

Ben pinches the bridge of his nose. He fails to tune out the soft crying of the hurt and frightened little girl disturbing his peace.

Like he said, he’s not a monster.

He gets up from his bunk and crouches down next to her, taking her wrist and inspecting the cut. She holds still for him, tears rolling down her face. The gash is bigger and deeper than he anticipated, but nothing worth getting a suture kit out for. Besides, Ben is a decent Healer, all told, despite his preference for the more violent aspects of Jedi training.

“Go run some water over it. I’ll get the bandages,” Ben tells her, too exasperated to put the amount of irritation in his tone he normally would. He doesn’t like being too nice, because then Rey might bother him more.

He takes a Healing kit from its cabinet and sits down on the other side of Artoo, who wobbles and beeps happily at him.

“Don’t get used to this,” Ben tells him.

Rey returns and sits back down with a drippy hand. The blood has already stopped, so Ben wipes her off with a towel and sets about sanitizing her cut, pulling the Force together to speed the healing, then bandaging it.

When he’s done, unthinking--a bad habit, nothing more--he wipes the tear tracks under her eyes with the pad of his thumb, combs her messy hair to the side to keep it out of her eyes. “Better?”

She nods, still unsmiling, and says, quiet, “I’m sleepy now.”

“Okay, let’s get you to bed then.” He stands, but she stays still, looking down at her hands in her lap. “What’s wrong?”

“I want you to tell me a story,” she mumbles. She hasn’t asked for a story since she was five and Ben told her that big girls don’t need stories to fall asleep. Uncle Luke never told her a single story in her life, under the playful guise that he had a protocol droid who was much better at storytelling than him. Rey would just have to wait to meet Threepio to hear all his stories, Luke explained.

At one point, Ben liked telling her stories, but he would never admit it to anyone in a million lightyears. He had to stop for his own sanity; fantastical delusions weren’t helping him get off this stupid rock.

Looking down at her from where his head now nearly touches the ceiling, Ray seems so tiny and fragile. When she’s awake and energetic, her Force presence takes up the whole island. She could be on the furthest reaches of the south shore and Ben could still close his eyes and pinpoint her exact location.

It’s horribly annoying, living with someone not old enough to master basic shielding. He feels every emotional high and low, every blip of curiosity and intrigue, every success and defeat of an adventurous little girl.

And right now, she’s scared. Terrified, even. Of Ben.

It shatters something in him. Just because he’s miserable doesn’t mean he wants Rey to be. He certainly doesn’t want to be the _cause_ of it. He just wants to stew in his seething hatred toward his parents for abandoning the both of them and squashing his potential for greatness. Rey doesn’t need to be involved in any of that, but right now is the first moment Ben realizes that maybe _he_ hasn’t been shielding as well as he thought, and Rey is growing at the speed of light, so maybe she’s more perceptive than he gives her credit for.

“Alright,” he relents.

She looks up at him, shocked. “Really?”

He nods, and gestures toward his bunk. Rey doesn’t waste any time jumping to her feet and launching herself into his bed. She huddles in his nest of blankets, her tiny body not even taking up a fraction of the cramped space.

Ben flicks off the lights using the Force--because there’s no one there to tell him he can’t--and reaches into her bunk to take her Rebel pilot doll from where it lie among the messy covers of her bed. When he hands her the doll and slides in beside her, she holds it against her chest and presses her forehead to his shoulder. He can feel her fear slowly abating, sleep weighing heavy on her after a long day.

Nevertheless, she reaches out and wiggles her hand in front of his face. “Kiss it.”

Ben heaves a weary sigh and presses his lips gently over the bandage. Rey takes her hand away and mumbles two shy syllables that might be, “Thank you.”

“Ready?”

She nods against his shoulder.

“Once upon a time,” Ben begins, staring up at his hand-drawn map of Tatooine’s star cluster under Rey’s bunk, “there was a great and powerful knight who fell in love with a beautiful queen. But it was not a happy love, because they couldn’t be together--”

“Why not?” Rey asks, even though she’s heard this story before.

“Shh, I’ll get to it.” Ben continues, “The queen, devoted to her people and her position, refused to love the knight in return. The knight thus repressed his love for the queen for many years, thinking that if only he grew more powerful, one day they would meet again under different circumstances, and she would see how much he’d grown, see all he had to offer, and love him…”

Ben tells the whole story, voice dipping quieter and quieter until he thinks Rey is asleep.

“In the end,” he says, nearly in a whisper, “their love was only temporary, the brief eclipse of two planets orbiting in opposite directions. Like the queen had first chosen leadership over love, so too did the knight, despite her devotion to him.”

Moments pass, and Rey, voice tiny, asks, “Benny?”

“Hmm?”

“You’ll never abandon me like the knight did to the queen, right?”

Ben frowns. “He didn’t abandon the queen. The point of the story is that the knight chose glory over love.”

“But there is no glory without love,” Rey replies.

Ben lets the thought settle in the quiet darkness of their little home.

***

The next day, Ben wakes up as Rey knees him in the ribs trying to climb over him. He falls back asleep after she brushes her teeth and leaves with Artoo for whatever daily adventure awaits her.

Hours later, when most _respectable Jedi_ \--as Uncle Luke always says--would be lunching, Ben rolls out of his bunk to face the dreary sunny and warm day ahead of him. He looks at the Standard calendar on the wall, Rey’s slate discarded on the small dining table. Fourteen marks are drawn onto it in a neat little row, and Ben realizes Rey’s tenth birthday is coming up.

Nearly ten years since he’s seen Han or Leia. He has now lived more of his life without his parents than with them. The rise of the First Order happened shortly before Rey’s birth, and Ben had always attributed it--and the entire chain of chaotic events thereafter--to Rey. Being imprisoned with the cause of all that had been stripped from him was utter torture, but he attempted to endure it with the strength and grace that he imagined his grandfather would.

Leia’s unerring commitment to the budding Resistance movement shredded her relationship with Han, who, along with Uncle Chewie, was reaching the end of their rope raising a son with immense Force strength and no way to hone it. So he contacted Uncle Luke and asked if it might be best to train Ben in the ways of the Jedi, but Luke was busy seeking out other Force sensitive younglings to help build the Jedi temple on Coruscant, while trying to be a single father toward infant Rey, and that’s pretty much how they all ended up here--waiting for Luke to open up the new Jedi temple and come out of hiding, always dodging the First Order, and learning the ways of the Jedi much too slowly for Ben’s liking.

To him, it would make much more sense for Uncle Luke to train him fully, then Ben could teach Rey, and once he got his flying license, they could double Luke’s efforts and get the job done twice as quickly.

But if there’s one thing Ben has learned about Jedi, it’s that they don’t listen to reason when it’s staring them right in the face.

The point is, Rey’s birthday is coming up, and Ben is terribly bored, and feeling a little guilty about her not-entirely-undue fear of him. So he gets an idea.

***

The project keeps Ben occupied for several days. Luckily the planet’s days are in their long cycle and the nights are short. Rey always sleeps in the dark and wakes in the light, but Ben has never had such a talent. His sleep cycle shifts with his mood. Some days he sleeps until sunset and stays awake all night; other times he doesn’t sleep at all.

When Uncle Luke is home, he insists that Ben stay on a steady schedule, and Ben only appeases him because he can’t learn anything about the Force if he sleeps through his lessons.

Ben looks up tutorials on his datapad while Rey is adventuring. He has supplies to retrieve but they all seem like things that would be available on the island, so he ventures out when the moons are full and Rey is sleeping peacefully in the trailer, his Force presence attuned to her childlike dreams so that he can return quickly if she needs him.

The most difficult item to locate is a sheep. But he manages, and also somehow placates it long enough for shearing. He feels absurd, sneaking out in the middle of the night with scissors to vandalize a sheep, but the other option is waiting for Uncle Luke to take them to the Outer Rim for a supply run.

By the morning of Rey’s birthday, Uncle Luke still hasn’t returned. And unlike almost every morning of Rey’s short life, Ben wakes up before her, and she sleeps in past the sunrise. So he fixes her breakfast with the nicest ingredients of their rations, and she stirs in her bunk. Moments later, Ben hears her crying quietly, and can see her tiny form curled up on its side.

“Rey?” Ben asks, setting a her plate at her spot on their small table. He doesn’t usually call her by her name, instead using “you” or “girl” or ignoring her completely.

It’s her turn to ignore him, so he turns off the burners and the stove and crosses to her bunk. As he approaches, he notices a tiny block, like a road bump in the Force--an innocent attempt at a shield. She’s never attempted a shield before; she’s never had anything to hide.

Behind the little bump is a wave of extreme sadness, the kind that only children can feel because grown-ups either repress all their sadness or transition it to anger. It’s a defeated feeling, one that Ben doesn’t think he’s ever felt because he paints all his problems elsewhere.

“I thought he’d be here,” Rey says, muffled in her pillow. “I thought he’d be back today.”

Ben reaches out and places a tentative hand on Rey’s bony shoulder. She seems so strong and tough all the time, but she’s so fragile. He notices that the slate is propped against the wall by her bunk, the tally marks getting smaller and smaller. If Luke doesn’t come back soon, she’ll run out of room for all her tallies.

There’s nothing to say to that; Ben secretly hoped Uncle Luke would return today as well, or at least have notified them he’d still be gone, not because he misses him, but because he wanted Rey to be happy. He hates admitting that to himself, but it’s difficult to self-shield when the Force all around them feels like the cold, clammy drizzle of rain.

“I made breakfast,” Ben says instead. “And I have a present for you.”

She turns around in her bed and looks at him, her bunk at eye level with him. She sniffles and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “You do?”

A ray of hope like a slat of sunlight through the clouds pierces the Force. Ben smiles in reassurance, the sensation utterly foreign to him, but not entirely unwelcome. “Happy birthday.”

***

Ben tells Rey she can’t have her present until she eats her breakfast, so she inhales it. Food is only fuel to her anyway, but Ben has an appreciation for the finer things--he steals some of Uncle Luke’s Corellian brandy once in awhile, not that Luke ever has occasion to drink it.

With her mouth still full, Rey puts her fork down and says, “Done.”

Ben reaches into the storage bench beside him and takes out a small package he wrapped in a pair of big leaves, tied with twine. Rey’s eyes go comically wide when she sees it--Jedi aren’t big on gift-giving, as far as Ben has read. Something about a dependence on materialism, but if Jedi are all about goodness, you’d think doing whatever it takes to earn the look on Rey’s face would be the purest kind of good there is. It’s almost enough to make Ben forget about how much he hates his stupid island and his stupid family for leaving him here.

Rey takes it in her small hands and puts it on her lap, running her fingers over the leaves and the twine like it’s the most precious thing she’s ever held. It takes up her whole lap, her feet dangling over the seat.

She looks up at Ben and asks, “Can I open it?”

“Go for it.”

Carefully, she pulls one end of the string until the bow comes undone. The leaves fall away. She picks up the bag of wool first, then the wooden sticks and spindle, inspecting them with a kind of open curiosity she no longer has for electronics.

“How do I turn it on?” she asks. She turns the spindle around looking for a power button.

Ben kneels down beside her and takes the spindle. “You don’t. It’s a drop spindle.”

“What does it do?”

“You spin the wool with it and turn it into yarn.” Ben picks up the needles. “Then you use these to knit the yarn into things.”

“What things?”

Ben shrugs. “Garments, usually. Whatever you want.”

Rey makes a face and Ben is hit with a giant wave of confusion in the Force, like she can’t figure out the words to ask what she wants. And considering how little she talks, Ben is surprised she’s as articulate as she is. “It’s not broken. There’s nothing to fix?” It’s a statement that ends like a question, and Ben refuses to admit how cute it is.

“Nope, you use it to make things brand new. Not fix things that are broken.” She continues staring at the items, and Ben worries that she doesn’t like it. The cut on her hand from a few days ago has mostly healed. “I figure it wouldn’t hurt your hands as much.”

The burst of understanding coupled with excitement hits the Force so hard that it actually knocks Ben flat on his back.

“Oh! Sorry! Dad told me not to do that anymore.” Rey sets her gifts on the table and jumps down to pull at his arm with all her minuscule kid-strength. Ben sits up again, grinning--another foreign feeling, still not unwelcome.

“I take it you like it.”

“I love it! Will you teach me how?”

Admittedly, Ben only knows from all the tutorial videos he watched on his datapad, but given that Rey has never touched a datapad--preferring instead of figure things out on her own--she probably doesn’t even think about where things like clothes come from.

And since she prefers figuring things out on her own, Ben is surprised she asks for instruction. He’s even more surprised when he laughs and says, “Sure.”

***

Uncle Luke returns home ten days after Rey’s birthday. In that short amount of time, Rey has managed to herd an entire flock of sheep, shear them, spin a dozen skeins of yarn, mix three colors of dye, and knit her very first scarf.

Which Ben is currently wearing, despite the uneven tapering from one end to the other, the mismatched blue with his generally all-black attire, and the steady overbearing tropical heat of the island.

Luke glances around the space, littered for once with wool instead of broken electronics, tiny blue and green fingerprints over everything, and Artoo with yarn draped all over him.

“What the hell happened?” he asks.

Ben looks up from his datapad in surprise and clambers out of bed, standing at attention. “Uncle Luke.”

“Where’s Rey?”

“Oh, um,” Ben closes his eyes and tries to pinpoint where Rey is on the island. “Tending the sheep.”

“The _sheep_?”

“The sheep, yes. She sensed you, though. She’s on her way back.”

Rey’s little voice begins echoing in, “DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD,” and then she swings open the door and launches herself into Luke’s arms.

“Hey, kid!” Luke says, lifting her up and holding her against him.

Rey speaks so fast all her words get jumbled together, “You missed my birthday but that’s okay because Benny remembered and you’re back now so I can erase all the tallies on my slate and Benny taught me how to knit and I haven’t made you anything yet but I’m working on it and--”

“Whoa, slow down there.” Luke sets her down and kneels down in front of her. “I got you a present.”

Rey’s eyes go wide. “You did?”

Luke pulls a large Kyber crystal out of his pocket and hands it to her. It glows blue. She grasps it slowly and stares at it in awe.

“I wanted to take you to Lothal to pick it out yourself, but it’s too close to a First Order base,” Luke explains. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

“You mean I can…” Rey begins.

“Make your own lightsaber.” He stands and hands a green one to Ben.

Neither Ben nor Rey have ever used a real lightsaber. All of their training together involves bokkens that Ben carved from tree branches. Ben appreciates the idea of lightsabers, but he’s always found them to be too clean, too precise. To him, the headiness of battle is an ugly, brutal thing, and should be acted upon in an ugly, brutal way--with spat-up blood and broken bones, not cleanly cauterized wounds.

A weapon should hurt to wield, so that the warrior who wields it knows what it is capable of.

But that was then. Being in the presence of such a weapon is a heady feeling, and Ben takes the crystal with care.

Rey, unable to tear her eyes away from the gift in her little hand, whispers, “Wizard.”

Ben doesn’t say things like _wizard_. He’s far too articulate for that. But right now… “Wizard,” he whispers back.

“I’m trusting you with this,” Luke tells Ben. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“You don’t need to worry, Uncle.” Ben stands a little straighter. “I’m powerful.”

“Lots of things are powerful,” Luke replies. “Hutts are powerful, but that doesn’t make them good or skilled in anything other than wielding their own power. Being a Jedi is about more than that.”

Ben fails at tamping down the bubble of fury that rises in response. “Perhaps I would know that if I were trained with a bit more diligence.”

“Perhaps you would know that if you completed any of the assignments I gave you.” Luke glances around at the mess of their home, behind Ben where his bunk is messy. Ben is acutely aware of needing to bathe, and he can’t remember the last time he changed clothes. “But I guess you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Perhaps I wouldn’t feel sorry for myself if you let me train elsewhere. Like Coruscant.”

“Coruscant is under siege,” Luke supplies. “Not exactly the sacred ground we’re looking for to resurrect the Jedi Temple. Might be disruptive to the learning experience.”

“Your sarcasm never fails to delight me, Uncle,” Ben deadpans.

“I feel the same toward your unceasing critical commentary,” Luke replies.

“Will you stop it?” Rey asks, climbing onto a chair so she can almost match their height. “Dad, you don’t have to pick on Ben so much. Benny, you don’t have to hate everything new. We should be happy, not fighting.”

Behind them, Artoo wobbles and bleep-bloops in agreement.

“He started it,” Luke mumbles.

***

Ben electrocutes himself for the third time on the hilt of his soon-to-be lightsaber. “Fff--” he eyes Rey beside him, “--orce.”

Rey grabs his hand to look at it. Little blisters and scrapes litter his fingers and palms.

“I miss bokkens,” he tells her.

“I broke two of your ribs last time we sparred,” Rey replies as she takes the malformed hilt away from him. She resituates a crystal with ease and picks up a soldering gun to fix the rest of it.

“If it were a lightsaber, you would have sliced me in half.”

“You’d probably rather slice an enemy in half than make them wheeze for a few moments.”

“I think you underestimate how much it hurt.”

“I think you’re just a wimp.” After fixing the lightsaber, she closes it and hands it back to him. “Better?”

He holds it away from her and turns it on. The green blade flickers slightly, and the hilt vibrates in his palm. Rey helped him design it with spare parts lying around so that two extra blades jut out the sides.

“Better,” he says.

He takes it outside to a grouping of trees and lets loose on the flora. It feels good to move, to destroy beautiful things. So much better than being in the cramped trailer that he’d long outgrown, watching life pass him by.

His lightsaber wobbles so much he can feel the reverberation in his teeth. It doesn’t move with the Force so much as against it, piercing it, owning it. The lightsaber is wrong, it’s broken, but he likes it this way. It makes him feel stronger to wield something so chaotic.

He takes down a tree branch, and in doing so, his hilt becomes unbearably hot. He drops it, hissing inward through his teeth. His palm and the pads of his fingers blister from the burns, and he leans against a tree until the pain subsides.

He pushes his sleeve over his other hand and picks up the sizzling hilt, trudging back to the trailer to fix it once more.

***

Ben wakes up the next morning to the sound of muffled crying. He rolls over in bed to find Rey, more frazzled than he’s ever seen her, weeping over his lightsaber.

“What’s wrong?” he mutters, getting out of bed and sitting beside her. Before he even thinks about it, he puts an arm around her. She presses closer to him and cries into his shirt.

“I can’t fix it,” she says, muffled by his chest. “I tried everything, and it won’t--it won’t--”

“Hey, hey,” he replies, rubbing her back in gentle circles. “It’s okay. I’m not fighting anybody anyway.”

She pulls away from him and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “What about training? Dad wants us to start sparring more.”

Ben shrugs. “We’ll work something out. It’s just a temperature malfunction. We can insulate the hilt maybe.”

Rey’s eyes go wide.

“What?” Ben asks.

She jumps up and says, “I gotta go,” then runs out the door, calling behind her, “C’mon, Artoo!”

***

Uncle Luke returns again several days later. Rey is thrilled, and she and Luke talk animatedly about everything under the sun while Ben fixes dinner. Being ignored by them used to bother him, but it doesn’t anymore. Whenever he would butt into their conversations about nerd stuff, it would always end in an argument with Luke about how Ben feels he belongs in the Resistance, not stranded on an island letting his skills and talents go to waste.

Now he just enjoys seeing Rey happy. Even if it means feeling invisible.

After dinner, Rey goes off to use the last light of day tending the sheep, Luke leaves to make a call, and Ben is left with the dishes. The night is cool, and the window by the sink is open letting in the evening breeze.

As Ben washes the dishes, he can feel Rey’s Force presence down the hill, so much calmer than it usually is since Luke is home. He's never managed to feel Luke’s presence, though; he’s always too shielded.

Perhaps, then, it’s the direction of the wind, and not Ben’s skill with the Force, that brings Luke’s conversation to Ben’s attention.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Luke says.

A quieter voice, female, familiar, replies, “Just for a little bit longer.”

Ben feels his stomach sink first, and the realization follows: _Mom._ The dish in Ben’s hand drops into the sink.

Luke sighs. “We shouldn’t have had kids.”

“Things were different then. We had no idea the First Order would rise.”

“And now we have a responsibility--”

“To our people. Our children are safe. They’re happy, healthy. We’re doing the best we can with what we’ve been given.”

“He’s just a kid, Leia. He’s not dangerous. He was a little hot-headed when he was younger, but he’s grown out of it. We can really use him on our side.”

“No,” Leia replies. “I can feel it in him. Can’t you? The--”

“Darkness, right. I don’t think imprisoning him is really helping with that.”

“What else can we do?”

“Let me train him. Let me bring him to the base.”

“Right, because putting a kid with anger management issues in a war is a fantastic idea. Worked out great last time, don’t you think?”

Ben has heard enough. He leaves the dishes unwashed, and with trembling hands, shoves his meager belongings into a bag. In the back of his mind, he can feel Rey prod at the Force, asking if he’s okay. He doesn’t let himself dwell on how much he’s projecting right now, who can feel what.

He throws the bag over his shoulder and storms out of the trailer, crosses the field, and climbs into Luke’s ship.

It’s not fair. None of this is fair--his own mother won’t speak to him, but she’ll speak about him like she knows him, like she’s been with him for the past decade and didn't just dump him at a random spot in the galaxy for her brother to barely deal with.

He fires the ship up. He’ll go to Tatooine, ask around about his grandfather, the people who actually knew him. He'll train himself there, grow so strong that the Resistance will  _need_ his help. They'll beg for his help, worship at his feet--

Before he can launch, Rey climbs onto the hood of the ship. Her hair whips around underneath the brim of her hat.

Ben cuts the launch sequence and opens the hull. “What are you doing?”

“If you’re leaving, you’re taking me with you,” Rey says.

“You need to stay here, where it’s safe.”

“I’m safest with you.”

“That’s not what your father thinks.”

“I don’t care what he thinks. He leaves all the time.” Her chin trembles, but she steadies it, and adds, “Everybody leaves us, Benny. But we have to stick together.” Ben remains silent. Tears continue to well in Rey’s eyes. “You promised.”

“I can’t, Rey.” The explanation dies on his lips, that there’s something wrong with him, something broken in him that no one can fix.

Maybe he’s a monster after all.

Rey continues to be more perceptive than he gives her credit for. “I don’t care what they think of you. I know you. I trust you. And--” She opens her satchel, scrounges around inside it and pulls out a lumpy pile of wool. “I couldn't fix your lightsaber, so I made these for you instead.”

Ben gently takes them from her. His hands are still healing, but he puts the mittens on anyway. They fit nicely, even though it feels ridiculous to be wearing mittens on a tropical island. 

“Please stay?” she asks. 

Ben glances at her. Sure, he realizes, maybe he's broken. Maybe there's a reason everyone's always been afraid of him. But maybe Rey is all the insulation he needs to keep from burning.

“Okay,” he relents. “But only if you make me a hat too.”  



End file.
